The Application
by acemckean
Summary: Charles and Renee Swan decide to take matters into their own hands to help their daughter, Bella, find a suitable mate and give them grandchildren. Follow the antics as they 'help' their daughter find love. Eventual B/E-cannon/AH- Teen for now/M later.
1. Chapter 1

_**This is a new story that I hope you like...**_ Thanks to Sara for looking it over so quickly..

**(Charlie's POV)**

My wife and I had given up all hope of ever becoming grandparents.

That was our reasoning for taking matters into our own hands.

When my wife was on the internet the other day, looking for our daughter's latest matches on several dating sites like, loving harmony and something called mingle2mingle, we were frustrated by the matches that were posted to her profile.

Who were they kidding?

We had been paying almost two hundred and fifty dollars a month for the past seven months and we were getting nothing, and I mean nothing, in return.

Of course, our daughter, Bella, knew nothing of this.

If she ever did, I doubted that she would still come over for Sunday dinners anymore.

"Nothing, nothing. Can you believe this crap? They want to pair our daughter up with the likes of a red headed freak that bares an awful resemblance to Carrot Top. I know Bella is a beautiful girl, but I don't think even our good genes could compensate the likes of this one."

I groaned. _I could not believe that I let her talk me into this._

"And look here, Charlie, this guy here," she said as she pointed to the picture on the screen, "Armando, has been her match under three different aliases on the other sites. He looks like an convicted felon. What do you think? You're a police chief. I bet if you did enough looking, he probably has an arrest record or something, and you never know, there may be a bounty on his head or something?"

_How does she come up with this shit?_

I had my head resting in my hands, my elbows keeping them propped up, while I listened to my wonderful wife, of over thirty years, as she all but cyber stalked every potential match for our only child, and only chance at grandparenthood.

We must have been looking at all of these different profiles for over two hours, when I heard a voice, thankfully, someone's other than my wife's.

"Mom, Dad," Bella called out from the bottom of the steps.

"Up here," I said as my wife tried logging out of the website and erasing the browser history before we were caught.

Bella was a beautiful girl, I mean young woman. It was so hard for me to see her go from one failed relationship to another, and she had basically informed my wife and I that she was giving up on the whole dating thing.

That was over three years ago.

We just started taking her seriously about nine months ago.

It was never so much that Bella ever had such a hard time meeting guys, it was keeping them. They would date for a few weeks, or months, and then nothing. The next thing you knew, my daughter was sitting on the couch with my wife and a package of chocolate, crying her eyes out and leaving us feeling helpless to do anything. Afterwards, I would get the tirade of man hating remarks, and I seriously feared for my manhood.

This happened over and over again.

So, I could understand her reasoning….to a point.

My wife, Renee, could not.

Bella was damn lucky that I even had the balls to try and hold Renee off with her plans of basically wedding her off as a mail order bride.

See, my wife, the love of my life, sometimes marched to the beat of a different drummer.

Ah, what in the hell was I saying?

Renee was essentially a wacko. We just never said it to her face.

I would just say she had an exuberant, eccentric, sometimes controlling behavior, but in a good way.

_You always had to remember to say in a good way, or else._

Bella came running up the stairs in her usual gear of sweats and her Ipod. She must have stopped by after her daily run and decided to check in on old mom and dad.

If you asked Renee, it was to make sure we weren't dead or anything.

"Hey, what are you two doing?" she asked as she scooted out of the way of the door to let her horse of a dog, Max, a giant, brown Labrador Retriever, through to see his grandparents.

My wife was so desperate, that she spoiled that dog, called him her grandbaby and purchased so many dog accessories for him, that I had to take away her credit cards for a while.

"My only chance at being a grandparent. I have better chances of getting great-grandkids from that neutered dog, than my own daughter," she would say and place a hand over her heart.

_Always had a flair for the dramatic._

"Nothing, nothing at all." My wife got up from behind the desk in the den and went around to great first, Max, with a dog treat, and then finally, our daughter.

Thank God, that Bella knew how quirky her mother was about things, and never questioned her strange behavior, or both of us would have been in heaps of trouble.

Bella looked over at me for confirmation, while her mother had her in a bear hug. I shrugged.

_Was shrugging necessarily lying?_

The two women of my life went downstairs, and I retreated to the bedroom and tried to get some rest, as Bella served as a distraction for Renee, for the time being.

Unfortunately for me, Bella's visit was short, and Renee came through the door, talking up a storm.

"You know, Charles, I think that we have been going about this entirely the wrong way," she said and came over to my side of the bed, pushing my legs over to sit at the end, and basically made me uncomfortable as all hell.

"And you know, Renee, you have a side of the bed, that is all your own. No need to come over on mine and be all uncomfortable," I said while my eyes were still closed.

_Could she not tell I was trying to sleep?_

"I'm not uncomfortable. Oh where was I? You know, Charlie, you really shouldn't distract me when I am trying to tell you something as important as this."

My eyes popped open. "Important as what?"

"Ugh, scoot over, I'm tired," she said and pushed me over to make herself more cozy.

Screw what I wanted.

"Now what was I saying? Oh yes, I was talking to Bella and I think that the two of us probably are not in touch with what Bella would necessarily like in a guy."

"Okay," I said.

"Well you see, Bella was talking about going out for drinks with a couple of her girlfriends, Alice, the impish looking one from her work, and Angela, a neighbor from her apartment complex."

"Okay and?"

"Well, what if I called the two of them, and let's say I asked them out to lunch to discuss Bella's little problem?"

"Are you really asking me what I think, or were you just informing me of your plans?" I asked.

Who was I kidding? I already knew the answer.

"Just telling you."


	2. Chapter 2

**Thanks to Twilightmommyof4girls for helping me out with this chapter. Okay this chapter is in Renee's POV- I am warning you she(my version of Renee)in my story is nuts. Please do not take any offense to her whatsoever. Each Chapter will be in a different POV, while we move forward. I hope you enjoy!**

(Renee's POV)

It took all that I had in me to wait until Monday to call Bella's friends. Three days, three whole days of waiting.

Because I wanted to see if I could.

And I had no way of getting the phone numbers, legally.

I wanted to go by Bella's apartment over the weekend and see if I could root out her neighbor that she talked about.

I mentioned my plans to Charlie while he was reading the newspaper for the third time on Saturday.

He said, it was crossing the creepy line and that he had better things to do this weekend then arrest his own wife.

Then he started to reread the newspaper, again.

Deep down, I appreciated his thoughtfulness, but did not understand his laziness.

So here it was, bright and early Monday morning, and I had already put three phone calls into the superintendent at the apartment complex where Bella lived.

He had not returned any calls, and I was beginning to think that he did not understand what the acronym a.s.a.p. stood for, or more likely, what acronyms were. Thus, leaving me with the task of calling and leaving him a forth message, explaining not only what a.s.a.p. stood for, but educating him all about acronyms.

I was cut off mid definition.

I thought about calling him back, yet I decided against it once Charlie informed me that the man could have the number changed or disconnected if I kept calling back.

That would not do. I could seek out other avenues for getting in touch with Angela some-thing-or-another.

I called Bella's office twice this morning before they actually opened. The message said to call back at 9 a.m. I called right before it, and now it was two minutes after, just enough time for her short friend to get situated at her desk.

Charlie was not too enthused by my insistence that he had to be conference called in from work, once I got in touch with her.

"Just to have all our bases covered, plus if she were to turn on us, I don't think that Bella will just believe me that we had nothing to do with this. She might think that I was lying, if it were only me."

"That's because you are, Renee. Now, don't you think that you are talking this a little too far?" he asked.

"Too far? Too far, Charles Swan? How could you even say that to me? You know how important this is, and by the way, we are doing this for her own good. Do you want Bella to be an old maid? You know that is coming. Soon, very, very soon, Bella will be at an age where guys will stop looking at her altogether. She will left all alone. Do you want that for her?"

"Renee, she's only twenty eight years old."

"Charles, I know they say that forty is the new twenty, but what happens in lets say two years when it will be more like thirty is the new fifty? You know they are changing things all the time. Now do you want our daughter to be a spinster living with fifty something cats when she is our age, or do you want to see her happily married with kids?"

"Fifty what? No!"

"Then quit fighting with me about this because we are wasting time. Every minute we waste could be potential husbands for her, and I am telling you, I would like to have grandkids before I'm in diapers.

"Renee, you're only forty seven."

"I know, I'm getting up there. Now are you going to help me or not?"

I realized a long time ago the way to a man's heart was not through his stomach, but by pure unadulterated guilt.

Of course, I brainwashed him to the point of total compliance.

But it was all for Bella.

The call with her co-worker and Charlie went even better than I could have expected.

With Charlie already on the line, I started dialing. I heard him on the other line, impatiently tapping his pencil on his desk.

"Will you stop that," I said, chiding him.

He stopped by the time Bella's little hobbit friend answered.

"Hello, this is Alice Brandon," she said.

I was so relieved that at least someone answered their phone, because if I had to leave one more message for someone today….

It would make me crazy.

"Yes, Alice, this is Renee Swan, and Charlie Swan. Say hi, Charlie," I said.

"Hi," he said with an arrogant tone.

We would discuss that later.

"Anywho, we are Bella's parents," I said.

"I know who you are, Misses Swan. We've met like half a dozen times now."

"Oh, yes I remember now," I said reluctantly. I only remember seeing her vertically challenged friend from a distance about a year and a half ago.

"You don't remember meeting me at all, do you?" she asked, her tone flat.

"Dear God," Charlie sighed.

"Umm, I am actually trying to remember who you were. Are you the one that could pass for Mary Lou Retton or the one that looked like she ate two dozen doughnuts a day for breakfast?"

"Excuse me," she laughed sarcastically.

"You know, the really short gymnast with the gaudy hairdo, like maybe three foot tall or something. Is that you?"

"Do you mean am I, Mary Lou Retton? Or am I very short?"

"Short."

"Well I guess I could be considered short, but my hair is fine, thank you."

Short, as in she would probably get kicked off rides at amusement parks, short.

"Did you have problems getting into the bar the other night to meet Bella?"

"No, why?"

"Well I just thought, with you only being as tall as a eight year old that you would have problems."

"Renee, just get on with it," Charlie instructed.

"What? I was just asking. Now where was I? Oh yes, I was calling to see if you could meet me and my husband for lunch or something this week? We have something important to discuss with you and we were hoping that you would."

"Would I what?"

"Meet up with us so we could talk about our daughter, Bella. We are very worried about her and we wanted to know if you could help? But please, no matter what, Bella can not know of this, do you understand?" I asked.

"Misses Swan," she said.

"Please, call me Renee. Misses Swan is my mother-in-law's name, and it makes me feel so old. Plus, I can't stand to be categorized in the same breath as the old hag."

"Renee," Charlie scolded.

"Sorry, Charlie. You know how I feel about her."

The female gnome cleared her throat and said, "Okay, I don't think that I have time for all of this, but if you want me to meet you, I will. I have to get back to work now, so how about we meet Thursday night, at let's say, The Lantern? Do you know where that is?"

"Yes, we know where it is," Charlie butted into the conversation and said.

Could he not see that I was handling this?

"That's fine, but there is no way that you could meet us any sooner? Like let's say tonight?" I asked, very optimistic with the thought of getting this situation under control even sooner.

She huffed.

This person was going to sit here and act all aggravated with me? Maybe I was supposed to act all sympathetic to her plight.? It was true that I had never seen a little person, except for that show on TLC, Little People, Big World. Maybe I was being a bit crude.

_But she had no right to be snippy with me!_

I figured even if she could have had the starring role opposite of Frodo, that gave her no right to be so disagreeable.

I liked The Lord of the Rings. I had nothing against hobbits.

"No, Misses Swan," she said again, a little more chipper than she needed to be. "The only night that I can meet you this week is Thursday night. If that doesn't work for you than we could meet up sometime next….."

She was enjoying this. Forget even being hospitable. From now on, she was going to be known as 'bitchy dwarf', the unknown eighth dwarf from Snow White and the eight dwarfs .

"This Thursday will be fine," I said, my voice falling. "We'll meet you at let's say 5 pm?"

"Six," she countered, with a little to much joy in her voice for my taste.

"Five-thirty." When did she think this was a democracy?

"I cannot meet you until six, Misses Swan. I have to work until five that evening, and that puts the earliest time I can meet the two of you at six."

"But…"

"Six will be fine. Right, Renee?" Charlie said.

He probably thought that he was interceding on my behalf.

I was put off yet again. "Fine."

"Okay, well I have to get back to work now. I will see you Thursday at six. Goodbye."

And then she hung up. I was getting ready to say something, but the munchkin hung up.

_On me._

After that whole debacle, I was feeling a little down, but not out. I went over to Bella's apartment complex and knocked on her neighbor's door.

No answer.

I went back to my car and waited.

And waited…

And waited.

_This waiting shit sucks._

Finally after waiting for almost three whole hours, I saw movement outside her door. I was so entrenched with my binoculars, that were swinging back and forth around my neck, that I did not take notice of the skateboard that was laying in the middle of sidewalk. My left foot landed on the toy and sent my ass flying up at first, then had me landing on my face. The earlier drizzle made the ground moist and all too inviting. I stood to scrape some of the layered mud of the front of my white shirt and brown pants_. _

_Well, if I didn't look like a giant pile of shit._

With a slow stagger, I persevered. I made the choice to continue on this path, when it would have been easier for me to conceded defeat at this venture and retreat to the safe, warm, dry confines of my car. A few people who had witnessed my little sideshow were standing off in the distance, watching and snickering, as I made my way up the outside steps to the second floor where Bella's friend lived.

"There's no show here," I shouted out to them as I swung my mud matted hair from out of my eyes.

The mud was beginning to harden, making it difficult to stride up the stairs without pulling at the fabric. With an added twenty pounds of mud and grass on a person, it sure made for a workout while going up the stairs.

I took a deep breath and bent over at the waist, triumphing in the face of defeat. I wiped down a layer of mud off of my right arm, before I knocked on her door.

"Coming," a muted voice called out from behind the door. I listened as the footsteps came closer and played with the metal locks on the door. A young female, about Bella's age opened the door. She had brown hair pulled back away from her face and big, round, dark brown eyes.

Could this girl be any more dull? And I thought I looked like I was a big pile of poo. I had nothing on this girl.

"Hello?" she asked while giving me the once over. Who did she think she was?

"Yes. I am looking for Angela."

"I'm Angela," she said. She pulled out her glasses and put them on her face.

Oh dear God! This poor girl looked absolutely hideous. Those lenses appeared to be at least two inches deep. The black circular frames did nothing to accentuate…anything.

They appeared to be a style that was big back in the 80's.

"Oh, Misses Swan, how are you?''

She knew who I was?

"Fine, thank you. I was hoping I could talk to you about Bella," I said as I turned around to see the cars whizzing by.

"Sure…" she said hesitantly. "Is everything okay?"

"No. Not really. That's is what I wanted to talk to you about."

"Okay," she said and opened the door completely, and stepped to the side to allow my entrance. "Please come in."

Who decorated this dump?

"What a nice place you have here," I said, lying between my teeth.

Be nice, Renee. I could hear Charlie's voice say.

"This is me being nice," I muttered.

"Excuse me?" she said from behind.

"Oh, nothing. Anyway…I was hoping that you could help me with a problem that I am having with Bella," I said as I went over and sat down on her all white couch.

She squinted her eyes. "I could have gotten you a towel to sit on." Her tone was aggravated.

What did she have to be all pissy for? I had to sit on this ugly, uncomfortable piece of junk.

"For what? I'm fine."

"Not you…the couch. You have mud all down the back of you and now its all over my brand new couch."

"You mean you actually paid money for this thing? Hmm.. Who knew."

She stormed into the kitchen. Probably to offer me something to drink.

She came out with a bottle of fabric cleaner. "Could I get you to sit over there," she seethed and pointed to the wooden chair in the corner of the room.

Why would I want to sit on that hard chair, when at least my ass could at least be cushioned by something soft.

"I'm fine here, thank you," I said and observed the rest of her tiny apartment. She had painted the walls a off pink color, with some beige drapes that looked to be handmade.

She couldn't even sew a straight line by the looks of it.

"No really. I need to clean up the mud off of the couch before it stains."

I huffed and made my way over to the corner of the room where the other chair, the wooden one, was situated.

She started to spray the couch with some fabric cleaner and then dabbed at it with a cloth.

That was going to do nothing. "Here, let me show you…" I said and grabbed the towel out of her hand and started to scrub the surface of the couch.

"No! Stop!" she screamed.

Why did she have to scream? I know that she was trying to be polite and all, but did she want the stain out or not?

"What? You see you have to scrub," I said while really working over the fabric. "To get the stain out. You see." I pulled back the towel to see that the brown spot had spread over the whole entire cushion.

"Oops."

I took a brief glance at Angela's face. I think she was a little upset with me.

"Misses Swan," she said my name slowly and deliberately. "I am going to need you to leave."

What? Leave? I just got here and I haven't even had the chance to discuss my problem about Bella yet.

"But…I came here to talk to you about Bella."

"I know that, but I am going to have to leave to go buy something to fix. My. Couch." she started to shout at the end.

She opened the door and tapped her foot. I guess she seriously wanted me to leave?

"Well I am meeting up with Alice, you know Bella's little hobbit friend, this Thursday. I was wondering if you could maybe meet up with us to discuss my plans for Bella," I said as I was basically being pushed out the door.

She was standing at the door about ready to slam it in my face from the looks of it. Was she PMS'ing or something?

"Misses Swan, I will meet up with you this Thursday. Where and what time?"

"Umm. At The Lantern, I think. Let's say 6 P.M.?"

"Fine, but, Misses Swan."

"Yes?" I said as I was already out of her apartment and walking back towards the stairs.

"Alice is not a hobbit, and you shouldn't say such hurtful things about people."

Was she serious?

"Okay."

I left and was looking forward to telling Charlie all about my successful day. I figured I had enough time to get home and clean up. He'd never have to know about my mishap with the mud.

**Please be kind and review!**


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